Only candies and sweetmeats, you will see, were brought down through the chimney by the Christ-child on Christmas eve. The favorite time for gift-making from parent to child, from child to parent, from friend to friend, was on New Year’s Day. Hence that holiday is known as “Le Jour des Étrennes” (the day of presents), “étrennes” being a corruption of the Latin word “strenae,” the gifts exchanged during the Saturnalia, about which I have written in the fourth chapter of this book. Though Saint Nicholas is honored as the patron of children in nearly all the Catholic countries of continental Europe, he is rarely associated in any way with Christmas. That day is there held sacred to the Christ-child alone. In a very few localities Saint Nicholas may appear on his own day to find out what good little boys and girls would like to have on Christmas, or, sometimes, at New Year’s, but it is generally the little Jesus who is the actual gift bringer. In the Catholic portions of Austria and Germany all of the windows are lit up on the night of December 24 so as to enable Him to pick His way from house to house. Here you may again recognize a lingering memory of the Pagan and Jewish festivals wherein lighted torches, or lamps, or candles form a chief feature. [Illustration: Santa Claus up in a balloon. Copyright 1908 by Life Publishing Co.] And, indeed, one may point out right here that the Christ-child supplies another link with the old pagan Silenus. The latter, as I have told you, was, among other things, the guardian and tutor of the infant Bacchus. Whenever picture or statue represented him in this capacity all his evil traits were dropped. He became a very different being from the graceless reveller of the Bacchanalian feasts. He was now painted or carved as an old man, grave and sober, clean-cut in limbs and features, holding little Bacchus in his arms or on his shoulders. Possibly this figure may have suggested the mediæval legend of Saint Christopher, who, it is fabled, bore the Christ-child on his shoulders across a river in Germany. In Italy almost every church has an altar dedicated to the Christ-child and decorated with a wooden or waxen effigy known as “Il Bambino,” or “the babe.” On Christmas day this Bambino is specially honored by being dressed up in his finest clothes and placed in a mimic cradle, called a presepio. All good Catholics flock to do the image honor during the twelve days from Christmas to Epiphany.